Carmine
by incendiarydissension
Summary: Red text cuts your eyes open and you bleed, bleed into the glowing white screen. And everything goes away. The screaming wind. The ledge that means your death. One hand is on cold metal and the other on the flat, emotionless screen, filled with red text that's waiting with boredom for you to reply.


_I started this in February and it blossomed into a two and a half page puddle of words. I hope it isn't too much of a clusterfuck. also if you didn't see the tags, MAJOR WARNING FOR SUICIDE ATTEMPT if it upsets you really don't read this._

**_edi__t_**_** 4/15**: jesus christ ffn I hate your editing format :T fixed the endless block of text._

Keep struggling, you always told yourself. Someday you'll have the energy and time and resources and carefreeness to make your way out.

But somehow, it didn't end up happening that way.

The metal feels cold under your callused palms. The ridge of cement under your beaten red Converse feels sharper than it should. The water whispers cruel secrets underneath. The wind whistles past, hard enough to hear but not enough to stir your clothes, and on it you can smell the faint scent of gasoline and burning leaves. You can just feel the tension in your shoulders as you lean forward.

This bridge is abandoned. No cars have whizzed past here since you parked your scratched second-hand bike two hours ago. Nobody will find you. You'll be carried downstream and never discovered, not remembered nor cared about. Just the way you prefer.

You used to care, to feel fierce compassion for your friends and uncontrollable anger, too. All your emotions had been in the extreme, love and hate, always passionate and angry and filled with a wonderful, raging fire. They'd come easily as breathing to you, welling up ravenously with the intent of devouring all reason, and though you hadn't realized at the time...

You'd been lucky.

But the wild emotion slipped and spilled down the drain, releasing its grip on smooth porcelain walls as it grew all too heavy with the slowly growing feeling of uselessness. Always gray. Everything dull. School boring, with monotonous people and monotonous hazy days. You never let your stony expression slip, because there is no reason to. Nobody is willing to or capable of prompting emotion. Not anymore. Only at home in the safety of your room do you sob into your pillow, knowing you'll never do anything worthwhile and never be useful to someone and never achieve something amazing because your apathy simply isn't worth getting over.

The wind is picking up now, as though in encouragement. This is no longer an option- it's the only fire exit to a slowly burning building, and you're about to burn your palm on the doorknob. This is the one chance you have to end it all, for the sake of everyone you know. Including yourself.

You know if you stop now, you'll never be able to do it again.

Another breath. Each one has the intent of being the last, but none of them are good enough, somehow, to be the final tiny fraction of oxygen your worthless body consumes. Each one is bigger, bolder, and before long you find yourself hyperventilating, choking out half-formed, airy sobs, lungs struggling to keep up. You're drowning, drowning in the only thing that still keeps you alive.

You were so sure, when you came down here. Everything was so close, so far away, everywhere and nowhere all at once. Empty. Empty. Empty. But now it's all closing in on you, the last view, the last gasp of air, the last thought that passes through your twisted mind. The last tear ripped out of your eye by the rising wind.

The wind whips at your clothing. The metal stings your palms. The sun is a knife against your starved skin. There is a buzzing, a buzzing all around. It's in your head. It won't stop. It never stops. And when you try to plug your ears with hunched shoulders, it continues, in your back, your sides, the pocket of your jeans. Your phone. Your phone is buzzing.

The pocket of your jeans scrapes your hands and it hurts more than anything else has. You couldn't remember your password if you tried, but muscle memory forces the screen open and sets the phone off again with a buzz, buzz, buzz. Red text cuts your eyes open and you bleed, bleed into the glowing white screen. And everything goes away. The screaming wind. The ledge that means your death. One hand is on cold metal and the other on the flat, emotionless screen, filled with red text that's waiting with boredom for you to reply.

He asks where you are.

You say home.

He knows you're lying.

How?

He's there.

He's waiting for you to open the door.

He has some shitty new comic to show you, or a skateboard move, or a brand new rap about nothing in particular. About Obama and video games and irony and smuppets. A pointless, awful rap, as pointless and awful as your own life has become. You abuse him. You debilitate him. Each angry gray letter is a slap across the face to him and you hate him for making you care. And you do care, care so hard your numbed heart aches. And you hate him, and it hurts you so bad.

You tell him so. You hate him. He laughs and says he knows. Your fingers are brittle. Breakable. The wind forces itself into your mouth and you inhale again, and sob again, and you love him. And the words are on your lips and in your stomach and you retch and choke on the thought and nearly fall. And somehow, the words are on the keyboard then, and the Send button is staring at you with baleful yellow eyes. And the gray text appears there on the screen.

I LOVE YOU.

And then there is silence, and the wind stops, and your heart stops, there, frozen on the edge, unable to believe what you just said.

He asks what the fuck you're talking about. Are you joking?

Come on, dude, you're such a corny bastard. Of course you love him. How could you not?

Damn, he's just covered in bitches, isn't he?

You've been watching too many romcoms again. Come on, have some taste.

Are you still there?

Karkat?

And he's worried, you haven't replied yet and you're staring down at the water, the wipped and frothing water, and the pavement on either side, and trying to decide which one would be the best to end it, and the wind, the wind won't stop. He can tell something is wrong. He calls out to you with red words like blood, like the blood that you want to spill out and never rush through your veins again. He begs you to answer, and that's when you know you can't do it.

He's saved you again, the asshole.

He's asking where you are and you say nowhere and he says you're on the bridge aren't you and you don't reply and he asks what the hell is wrong with you, please answer, please tell me you're okay, and you can't lie to him. And he's using some app, some fancy A-list rich people app that uses GPS and a shitload of other things, and he says you're on the bridge and you nod but don't type anything and his words become increasingly sharper, more afraid, and he screams at you to answer, answer please.

You hurl your phone away. Your throat sounds like shattering glass. It lands in the water and sinks sadly under the surface, a distant wavering rectangle still glowing red. He's coming to find you. He's going to get help. Stay put. Stay where you are. Don't move. You'll be fine. Everything is going to be okay. And fuck, Karkat, please don't do this. Please, for the love of God. Please.

His words mean something, and it breaks you.

You hate yourself for your cowardice. You're pathetic. You're dull. You're blank. You're wax and the world is water, pouring endlessly over your whitened, blackened soul and pooling at the edges, because you're afraid of it and it's afraid of you. But you listen. And you wait, because he asked you to. And because you love him. And because he is red, so red, so burningly red that it makes you hurt more than the crack of pavement against your skull or the rush of water into your lungs ever could, and you love him. And there are distant sirens and then a motor and then a beaten up, ironically pink Jeep that stutters and hesitates because it's got faulty brakes and then he's there, douchebag sunglasses and ripped up jeans and red Converse just like yours. And there are arms around you, pulling, and you cry again, because you couldn't do it, and because he's there.

And you stay, because he asked you to.

_can you tell I've been reading Marcus Zusak again? yeah, I have. happy 4/13! heh. heh._


End file.
